The second meeting of the Student Experience Sub-Committee of LSU’s Transition Advisory Team took place on Thursday, March 14, at The Lions Building at the downtown campus of the LSU School of Medicine in New Orleans.

LSU Associate Vice Chancellor for Enrollment Management David Kurpius discussed LSU’s recruiting efforts and enrollment in relation to peer universities. Among other topics, Kurpius discussed how the recent budget cuts have hurt LSU’s recruiting and enrollment staff, and how the increases in tuition have affected out-of-state recruiting efforts.

Despite budget cuts and limited resources in terms of personnel, LSU’s Enrollment Management staff, comprised of 12.5 full-time employees, enrolled 57,000 students in 2012 and placed enrollment advisors in Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, and New Orleans, an emerging markets recruiter to scope the Chicago and Washington, D.C., area, and a transfer enrollment advisor to work on increasing transfer enrollment from community college systems across the state.

“Our role in the university is to recruit and admit students to the university and provide financial aid. Our primary mission right now is to increase the student population. We are hopeful this growth will occur with undergraduates and transfers, but we are one-people deep and currently not built to do that now,” Kurpius said. “In the end, we have to decide how LSU wants to position itself for the state, region and country. We are in a market place where not every university is going to maintain that national prominence; LSU is a national university and we need to start acting like it.”

Sub-committee member Lisa Pickering, assistant director of student aid at LSU Shreveport, also spoke on some of the changing trends in financial aid for students, particularly the increasing number of non-traditional students, who often come from the professional world and may not qualify for need-based tuition, such as Pell Grants.

In general group discussion, committee members talked about these and other issues such as student housing, the Tiger Bridge Program and freshmen residency requirements.

The Student Experience Sub-Committee of LSU’s Transition Advisory Team is next scheduled to meet on Wednesday, April 3, at the LSU Energy, Coast & Environment Building, Room 1019.

Online video streaming is available at http://www.lsu.edu/tat for all reorganization-related meetings for those who cannot attend in person.